Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective

Global environmental change and recent worldwide infectious-disease outbreaks make the ecological perspective of medical anthropology more important a field of study than ever. In this premier teaching text, authors Ann McElroy and Patricia K. Townsend integrate biocultural, environmental, and evolutionary approaches to the study of human health, providing a complete and authoritative ecological perspective that is essential for interpreting medical anthropology. Research by biological anthropologists, archaeologists, and paleopathologists illuminates the history and prehistory of disease, along with coverage of contemporary health issues, both local and global. This sixth edition is thoroughly revised and updated, with expanded discussion on the interaction of environment and infectious disease; new material on climate change, globalization, and the effects of war on physical and mental health; and an entirely new chapter on ethics in community health and medical anthropology. Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective captures the essentials of the discipline?and covers its ever-changing topics, trends, and developments?in an engaging, accessible way.

Ann McElroy, Ph.D., Associate Professor Emerita of Anthropology, directed applied medical anthropology graduate concentrations at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, from 1985 to 2013. She has done research in Nunavut, Canada, for the past forty-seven years and is the author of Nunavut Generations: Change and Continuity in Baffin Island Inuit Communities (Waveland Press, 2008). Other current research interests include culture and disability, traumatic grief, and historical trauma in indigenous societies.

Patricia K. Townsend, Ph.D., is Research Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo. Her most recent book is Environmental Anthropology: From Pigs to Policies (Waveland Press, Second Edition, 2009). She has done fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Peru, and at Superfund sites in the United States. After several years of college teaching, she has spent much of her career applying anthropology to non-governmental organizations, including church and refugee agencies. Her current writing projects relate her Papua New Guinea research to broader issues of human and environmental health.